Why Feminist Frequency Is Dead Wrong About 'The Witcher 3' [Updated]

Confirmation bias is dangerous. When you're always looking for evidence of something, you begin to see it even where no evidence exists. Perhaps especially when no evidence exists.

Take the recent tweets of the Feminist Frequency duo---Jonathan McIntosh and Anita Sarkeesian---regarding the recently released video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Sarkeesian has become the face of video game feminism, and McIntosh---to a far lesser degree---shares her podium and her reputation.

(It should be noted here that for reasons I truly do not understand, McIntosh has me blocked on Twitter, though I can still see some of his tweets if individually linked. Sarkeesian does not have me blocked. So kudos to that.)

Both have big problems with the new RPG from Polish developer CD Projekt RED, though their choice of medium to discuss these problems---Twitter---leaves a great deal to be desired.

McIntosh's tweets about the game, and about protagonist Geralt of Rivia, read like someone who has never played a Witcher game before, including The Witcher 3, or like someone all too eager to justify their own assumptions.

He describes Geralt as "emotionally deficient in the extreme. Never cries or laughs. Never expresses grief, fear, sadness or vulnerability." Which is, you know, patently untrue. Not a matter of opinion, but utterly untrue to the point where I do question whether McIntosh has actually played these games, or is just watching the trailers. (Hey, plenty of critics wrote angry things about American Sniper without watching the film first.)

Geralt is definitely a "tough guy." He definitely has a bit of the stoic, rugged hero about him. There's a bit of a Clint Eastwood vibe to him, both in his voice and in his role as "lone gunman" (or monster hunter, or whatever.)

But like Eastwood in many of that actor and director's finer films, Geralt is much more complex. He does care deeply about many people in his life. He smiles...a lot, though he's not the grinning type. His smiles are composed.

He's also incapable of crying because of his mutations, and sterile for the same reason. But he's the adoptive father of Ciri, and obviously cares about her deeply. There's little point really discussing McIntosh's claims, since they're simply false and a waste of time. But just for fun...

"Rage and anger are two of the only emotions men are really allowed to express in patriarchy," he tweets at one point, which is just silly. I get the need to use words like "patriarchy" and phrases like "toxic masculinity" because it's hip to traffic these types of terms, but let's get a few things straight here:

First, Geralt rarely displays either rage or anger. Far more often he displays a wry sense of humor.

Second, men in our culture are allowed to display lots of emotions. Look at our films and television, where men are often funny, sad, jealous, prideful, happy, and yes also angry. But not just filled with rage and anger. I'd say that most people don't like seeing men filled with rage and anger. It's uncomfortable.

"When emotional deficiency in male heroes is constantly shown as strength it reinforces to men that emotional expression is akin to weakness," McIntosh also tweets. But as discussed, Geralt is more often than not dealing in compassion. As players we can guide his actions, of course. We can be more selfish, less helpful---or we can give our monster hunting earnings to poor families, go out of our way to help friends, and so forth.

I think discussing masculinity in today's society is a worthwhile conversation, but being willfully ignorant of your subject matter is a terrible place to begin.

Sarkeesian's critique is much more interesting, though still wrong-headed, belying a deep misunderstanding of the role of fiction and fantasy fiction in particular.

She tweets about the character Ciri, who is playable at points in the game, and notes that "The Witcher 3 does to Ciri what Arkham City did to Catwoman. Thugs yell “bitch” and “whore” and sexually harass both women as you play them."

In response to people pointing out that NPCs hurl insults at Geralt, too, about his freakishness (he's a mutant) she observes, "Enemies call Geralt “freak” & “mutant’ due to fictional prejudice against magic. When they call Ciri “cunt” it’s rooted in real life sexism."

Now, I'm not sure that "mutant" is an actual insult hurled at Geralt. He's called a "freak" because he's a mutant (not because of magic, which has its own system of prejudice in the game world, including witch hunting and burning at the stake...) But why quibble?

Sarkeesian's core critique of how Ciri is treated, boils down to: "Also the "it's realistic for enemies to sexually harass female characters” excuse is nonsense in fantasy games filled with ghouls & wraiths."

Let's address two things here. First, how Ciri is treated. Second, how Sarkeesian and a whole bevy of critics who value political agendas over art write about fantasy.

Ciri isn't always treated horribly by the bad guys and NPCs in her game. Well, other than the bad guys trying to kill her I suppose---and surely such gentlemanly enemies ought to not have gendered insults as part of their assault?---but the NPCs don't simply write off Ciri as various horrible names. One of the main characters in the game---a deeply complicated Baron with some serious women issues---actually treats her surprisingly well.

Because this is actually a complex game with complicated characters in a world that's not wholly "good" or "evil."

Which brings us to the "fantasy about ghouls and wraiths" bit. I've encountered this line of reasoning before. If it's fantasy, the thinking goes, it must not need any internal consistency. If it's a fictional world, why can't it be a world where men and women are totally equal?

Well, because that's not how fiction works. There is fantasy out there where gender roles are much less traditionally defined. Lots of fantasy has tough warrior women who don't need to be rescued by the knight in shining armor. It's a genre that has a little bit of something for everyone. But much of it---the good stuff anyways---is believable.

The fictional universe of The Witcher 3 is one of deep gender inequality. It would be downright stupid and dishonest of CD Projekt RED to not include this reality in its fiction, simply to make a certain small segment of the population sign off on it as wholly politically correct.

But you'd have to actually learn a thing or two about The Witcher's world first to determine that. For instance, in the second game the Lodge of Sorceresses plays a pretty huge role. These are deeply complicated women with a great deal of power (who sometimes sort of use Geralt for sex, too) and hardly "damsels" or any other silly trope. Then there's Saskia, who remains one of the better and more compelling female characters in modern RPGs, and her role with members of the Lodge and all the other crazy (often sexist) politics of the Northern Kingdoms.

Likewise, the Witcher games deal with racism. Elves and dwarves aren't just other races there for the fun of it---they represent downtrodden racial groups. There's even pogroms. Racial-based murders and backlash from those murders, and so forth. Would it be better to not deal with racism in games like this because "it's just fantasy"? What a juvenile, backward way to view the world, to view art.

Are the insults hurled at Ciri designed to put down women in our world? Goodness no. Ciri is a remarkable, powerful, lethal heroic figure. She's quite a lot more over-powered than Geralt in her scenes, in fact. These insults function the same way insults toward Geralt function---to show how in this world, a woman with a sword is a freak, also, in the same way a mutant is a freak. But that makes her all the cooler and tougher, I think. And really, that's kind of obvious isn't it? I'm having a hard time understanding how this qualifies as really important criticism or discussion of gender in video games.

And don't get me wrong, I think that's a perfectly fine and reasonable thing to talk about. There are many ways games can do better, just in broad terms of writing and character development. Women have only just started seeing decent representation in games. But a game like The Witcher 3 actually has great female characters, unlike many of its peers. It's an odd target, in other words. Very odd.

It reminds me so much of arguments I had long ago about the "rapey" nature of Game of Thrones. Some critics at the time argued that author George R.R. Martin included rape to titillate, not to show how dark and gritty Westeros was. They responded to the argument that this was a genuine attempt to show how bad things were for women in Medieval times by saying "Well it's fantasy so that's just sexist."

But that's crazy to me. Fiction is supposed to highlight real world issues. Rape is a real world issue. Sexism is something women actually confront in their jobs, at home. Why is it off limits to actually address that with fantasy fiction?

The answer? It's not. Art is not supposed to serve a political agenda. That's what propaganda is for. Art does and should deal with real world issues, make us think, challenge us. What it shouldn't do is simply confirm our biases. Fortunately, The Witcher 3 does no such thing.

Yes, it's depressing to see all the vitriol hurled at Sarkeesian. It's immature and stupid. But I do wish she'd come up with better arguments than this. It feels like little more than preaching to the choir rather than examining something honestly. Surely she can do better. Surely we should always hold our own beliefs under just as critical a magnifying glass when we set out to critique others.

So I've been reading many reactions to this piece online (most of which are quite positive) and I want to make just a few small clarifications for readers on social media, reddit, NeoGaf and elsewhere.

Hipster

When I write about McIntosh and say "I get the need to use words like "patriarchy" and phrases like "toxic masculinity" because it's hip to traffic these types of terms," I'm not denying that these things exist. Patriarchy is real. There is such thing as toxic masculinity. But McIntosh bandies them about like someone more interested in social signaling than in hard-wrought analysis. It reminds me of the scene from Good Will Hunting:

Maybe that's a little harsh. But McIntosh appears to be discussing a game he has very little experience with, and using that game to pave the road for his vocabulary rather than the other way around. Geralt is not an example of "toxic masculinity" but certainly there's much to discuss about the Bloody Baron and his broken family, his own sense of value as a man after what happens between him and his wife, etc.

Propoganda

Another point of clarification. Above I write: "Art is not supposed to serve a political agenda. That's what propaganda is for. Art does and should deal with real world issues, make us think, challenge us. What it shouldn't do is simply confirm our biases."

I don't mean to suggest that art ought to be devoid of politics. But when art's purpose is merely to peddle a certain political agenda, I think it loses much of what makes it art to begin with. It seems to me that people like Sarkeesian would like to gloss over all the horrible things that have happened to women in the past, and so in a piece of fantasy fiction like The Witcher 3, we should have a Utopian world of gender equality and politically correct bandits. That would present the world according to Sarkeesian's political preferences, and rob the art of much of its power. Instead, The Witcher 3 presents things like sexism and racism and so forth in a fairly realistic manner (given the context) and let's gamers themselves absorb the lessons of this world without shoving it down their throat. There is no clear political agenda within the work, though it isn't hard to see that its creators disapprove of sexism, racism, and bigotry. Geralt himself, as the moral compass of the game, is against these things. A sexist backdrop for a story does not make the story sexist. To draw a comparison, a film like Schindler's List isn't anti-Semitic. And while that film is clearly against anti-Semitism, it never shrinks from the horrors of World War II and the Nazis. Sure, it's based on a true story; but The Witcher books are based on historical truths as well, in spite of their fantastical elements. Indeed, the books (and games) share something in common with Schindler's List in their examination of racism, pogroms, etc.

Tweeter

Another criticism I've seen of my article is why would I bother to make an entire article over a handful of tweets.

I simply believe that Twitter is a terrible place to come to any conclusions, any decent resolutions, and is fraught with misunderstanding and malice. It's a bad place for McIntosh and Sarkeesian to begin their critique of the game in the first place, but it would be worse if I simply hopped onto Twitter to carry on the comedy of errors. So I write an article here instead.

Additionally, some have said "Well she just tweeted something off-the-cuff, why respond to a tweet? If it was important she'd make a video about it."

The fact is, at this point Feminist Frequency's Twitter page is probably more relevant than the videos they produce, which are remarkably few and far between. The Twitter critiques are wide-reaching given their nearly 300k followers. Twitter is a valid medium for expressing opinion, and it's valid to address those opinions. It's not useful to get in a big Twitter fight, though, hence the blog post. Ideally, Sarkeesian would later address these criticisms in her own post or video.

Freelancer

Speaking of which. NeoGaf readers in particular need to understand something: I am not merely a blogger using Forbes.com for my personal ramblings as though this was WordPress.com. I am a freelancer, yes, also known here as a "contributor." I am paid for my work, just like (hopefully) freelancers at many other publications. I have written here for many years, and it is irresponsible for people to continually spread falsehoods about what that means. I doubt very much that NeoGaf always points out whenever a writer at IGN, Eurogamer, or elsewhere is a freelancer. I'm not sure why it's so terribly important to do so with my work.

Thanks to everyone for reading and, by and large, having a remarkably fruitful and civil conversation about these issues.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a dystopian work of fiction, depicts a world in which women are subjugated by their male counterparts and explores the various means by which they gain agency. Much like The Witcher 3, the book offers a look at inequality through the lens of fiction--where the game does different, however, is it lets players actually fight to overcome these antiquated and troublesome realities. If anything, this speaks to the power of gaming as a form of art and experience, as it lets people experience different realities with different outcomes rather than being taken on a ride through a linear, predetermined narrative.

One last point that ties into this and my previous musings on the purpose of art.

I've always believed that fiction helps us develop empathy. That's why kids that read a lot often have an easier time relating to other people. In some sense, they've been able to experience all these different stories, worlds, and so forth. Read a story about bullies, and you maybe can empathize better with the kids getting picked on---but also maybe you can understand the bullies better, too.

I think games can do the same thing, but as Cheong notes you have a more interactive experience with games. So as Ciri, maybe some men playing the game can hear these insults, these horrible words, and actually experience them in a way that they normally wouldn't, creating---hopefully---some empathy from the experience. It might not impact everyone the same, but the more we're exposed to both good and bad in fiction, video games, and the like the more opportunity we have to relate to others. To freaks. To one another. To our own selves.